MPLS has become the accepted technology carriers are using to consolidate multiple networks and services in the drive to lower operating expenses. Now used in core networks primarily for traffic engineering, more service providers are beginning to employ the quality of service and tunneling aspects of MPLS.
A Probe Research Inc. report released in March indicates the market for MPLS has improved dramatically over the past 24 months, with many regional and national network operators having introduced the technology into their network operators and announcing MPLS-based services. “Many service providers that were, at best, skeptical about the benefits of MPLS in their network are now actively examining strategies to bring MPLS on board,” says Richard Endersby, vice president of Internet routing and switching for the consulting and research firm, which was recently renamed Probe Group LLC.
Probe’s Endersby says end users increasingly issue requests for proposals asking major carriers for MPLS. He says that’s partly the result of the hype around MPLS, but adds it also can be attributed to a desire by end users for a better infrastructure that improves quality of service for various applications. For the carrier, MPLS enables multiple networks to be collapsed in an effort to lower operational expenses.
“[MPLS is] all over the place,” says Andrew G. Malis, chairman and president of the MPLS/Frame Relay Alliance. “There have been hundreds of publicly disclosed deployments. In the United States, just about every service provider has deployed MPLS. Sprint is the exception.”
Indeed. BellSouth recently implemented a regional MPLS backbone along with what it calls a next-generation multiservice provisioning platform, or MSPP, to converge IP and legacy services using a single edge platform. The move is part of a BellSouth “cap and grow strategy,” according to Alan Blackburn, research director of science and technology.
BellSouth’s MPLS vendors include Cisco Systems Inc. for the edge and Juniper Networks Inc. for the core technology. Among the new services enabled by MPLS are BellSouth’s new MPLS-based managed network VPN, which delivers access aggregation. The carrier has asked Cisco and Lucent Technologies Inc. to supply it with the next-generation SONET MSPPs.
Meanwhile, AT&T announced last month at SUPERCOMM that it will implement an MPLS backbone and multiservice edge by 2005 in a move to collapse its multiple networks and to simplify things for its customers. Chairman and CEO Dave Dorman says by using MPLS, AT&T “will reduce the number of physical components in the network dramatically.” That includes not just the different service/protocol boxes on the various networks, but also all the ordering systems, heating and cooling devices, and other related elements. The move to MPLS will also enable AT&T to cut its real estate, operational and human resources costs, he adds.
AT&T customers, meanwhile, will be able to run various applications over a single network, says Dorman. Customers will also have access to additional bandwidth as needed, rather than requiring them to contract the carrier for additional bandwidth or a new service, adds Dorman.
Elsewhere, Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group is in the midst of deploying a national MPLS backbone, a process it started in the second half of 2002. The goal, says Tom Roche, director of advanced networking services at Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group, is ultimately to offer interconnectivity among all of the company’s layer 2 services. As of late April, Verizon had yet to name an MPLS vendor.
The other big RBOC, SBC Communications Inc., told xchange this spring it plans to deliver multipoint, gigabit Ethernet solutions that are MPLS enabled and based on HPVLS, an implementation of Ethernet over MPLS based on the Martini Draft, at the end of this year. It will likely be made available first in SBC’s top metro markets, which include Chicago, Dallas, Detroit and San Francisco, and then expanded to second tier markets.
On the vendor side, many major suppliers that didn’t offer MPLS products have filled the void in recent weeks through new partnerships and acquisitions.
For example, Lucent this spring joined forces with Juniper to distribute, develop and integrate next-generation solutions for service providers. The partnership gives Lucent the MPLS technology it was lacking and enables router vendor Juniper to tap into service providers with traditional telecom networks more easily.
Meanwhile, Alcatel announced in May plans to buy three-year-old Silicon Valley company TiMetra Networks, which specializes in IP/MPLS service routing at the network edge, for approximately $150 million. With the addition of TiMetra’s products, Alcatel says customers will be able to better exploit IP to provision a range of valueadded services such as SLA-based VPNs and virtual private LANs.
Also in May, Tellabs announced plans to acquire privately held Vivace Networks for $135 million in cash and employee stock options. The deal is expected to close this quarter.
Tellabs sells a line of popular transport and access products for metro and regional networks. Vivace sells multiservice IP switches, which combine native Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing capabilities, enabling frame relay, ATM, Ethernet and IP services to be transported over an MPLS core network; those products have been deployed by Tier 1 carriers in both the United States and Asia. Tellabs says the deal between the two companies will enable the new company to offer a complete, global transport and data solution to address Layer 1, 2 and 3 network applications.
“Acquiring Vivace is the next step on Tellabs’ path to profitable growth,” said Michael J. Birck, chairman and CEO of Tellabs, in announcing the deal. “This move enables Tellabs to offer exactly what our customers around the world are looking for a next-generation platform that helps service providers smoothly migrate from today’s services to the most profitable data services of tomorrow.”
But although some seem to be marketing MPLS as a way to help carriers create new revenue-generating services, Inbaar Lasser-Raab, director of IP services marketing for Nortel Networks, says the technology doesn’t really enable anything new in the way of services in the short run. “You don’t need to have MPLS to offer new services,” she says. “What you need is a smart edge.” For example, she says, IP VPN services can run over existing legacy networks and products like Nortel’s Passport multiservices edge switch can deliver QoS with or without MPLS. However, if carriers want to increase revenue in the long run, they will need the scalability of MPLS, which can support more and larger VPNs than can existing legacy networks, she says.
Probe’s Endersby agrees. “If you’re an RBOC or a PTT, [MPLS] probably doesn’t really give you anything you didn’t already have with revenue or new services. But if you’re a Level 3 you can do Layer 2 service on MPLS — Layer 2 VPNs.”
Of course, MPLS also can be used to support a variety of services and functionality now available on legacy frame relay, ATM and SONET networks. The MPLS/Frame Relay Alliance’s SUPERDemo showed ATM and frame relay over MPLS and virtual private LAN services over MPLS, among other applications, last month at SUPERCOMM. The exhibit also included a demonstration of a new MPLS feature called fast reroute, which allows MPLS to reroute around failures in 50 milliseconds — outfitting this new technology with SONET-like resiliency.
Malis of the MPLS/Frame Relay Alliance says the industry group is working on moving MPLS closer to the edge so service providers running MPLS have a well-defined interface to interconnect their networks.
Nortel is positioning its Passport switch, which occupies the No. 1 multiservices switches market share slot, to help carriers bring MPLS to the edge. Some existing Passport customers expect to employ the product’s MPLS functionality later this year, says Lasser-Raab, who declined to provide the names of those customers.
The alliance also is looking at creating an MPLS user-to-network interface, which would allow MPLS service provisioning directly to end users, Malis says. “There are a good amount of end user networks running MPLS because many are Cisco customers in the enterprise,” says Malis. He notes that Cisco, which was one of the originators of MPLS with its tag switching technology, delivers MPLS functionality in both its enterprise and core routers. This new interface could enable service providers to deliver another alternative to ATM, says Malis, and to offer functionality like dynamic bandwidth provisioning controlled by the end user.
The group also is working on standardizing a method to connect voice gateways over MPLS. Another initiative in the works at the alliance is to standardize on how to enable MPLS-based Ethernet interworking with other layer 2 services. A final document on that spec is expected out by the end of this year or early in 2004.
The alliance also is drafting a spec on MPLS PNNI interworking, which would allow carriers to connect MPLS and ATM networks and have endto- end signaling. Malis says this is important for carriers transitioning current ATM backbones to MPLS and to allow MPLS endpoints to connect with ATM endpoints.
